The Founding Fathers (and Mothers) of Education

Everything has to start somewhere. The American education system was not always the way it is today. The Only for Teachers Timeline is an interesting insight into an understanding of who the education system was geared towards. As I had mentioned in the previous blog post, our education executives teach to the times. In the colonial period, our education is focused on religious teachings. If we taught the same things in colonial times as we did now, school districts would be under fire for religious intolerance. Like all professions, we as educators must adapt to change. Doctors do not do the same procedures they did 100 years ago, just as teachers cannot teach the same lessons over and over again for their whole careers. Like our founding fathers and mothers of education, we must teach our students to be avid members of society, therefore we need to prepare them for the world that they are going into. The When Did it Happen timeline was a perfect example of how we adapted to our changing society. Plessy vs. Ferguson and Brown vs. Board of Education are just a few examples of the education system adapting to a changing environment (segregation in schools). Thinkers like Horace Mann wanted to establish a schooling system that was going to get our students ready for the real world.It was thinkers like him, Thomas Jefferson, Noah Webster, Emma Willard, and Mary McLead Bethune who shaped our American Education system into what it is today. 
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